Waiting
by Julia456
Summary: It wasn't until Hank was shot that Hope realized she didn't want her father to die.
It wasn't until Hank was shot that Hope realized she didn't want her father to die.

Stupidly late in the game for that particular epiphany, but she had carried the anger for so long. Pushed it down into a hot, hard ball that filled the empty places, the broken places, that kept everything brittle but at least gave the pieces something to lean against.

Ten years ago, one year ago, she would've said _I don't care if he dies_ , or – if you caught her on a bad day – _Good, he deserves it._

But now she gave the world's most distracted witness statement to the police, sleepwalked through the insurance paperwork, took a seat in the hospital's waiting area, pressed her fingertips to her forehead, stared at the scuffed linoleum floor beneath her shoes, and thought _Please._

 _Please come back._

Her phone buzzed. It had been doing that with some regularity since Pym Technologies vanished in a microscopically imploding cloud. Hope checked to see who it was; she would have to be questioned in more detail by the police, eventually, but she was _not_ talking to reporters tonight, and board members weren't much on the list, either.

It was a number she didn't recognize. She let it go through to voicemail, then listened to the message.

"Everything's okay." Dave. Deliberately measured, deliberately normal. It could have been anyone talking about anything, except for the underlying strain that he couldn't quite hide. "He'll call later."

End of message.

She exhaled and leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes. So. Scott was all right, and the Yellowjacket suit was destroyed. Part of her was desperate to know the details. Part of her was desperate to hear them from Scott.

Part of her was desperate to _see_ Scott, and that was the part she laughed at, dry and humorless. God. What a world.

The rest of her, though – the rest of her was focused on Hank.

On the way to the hospital, out of the blue and for the first time in decades, she'd remembered when her parents had taken her to the top of Coit Tower. She'd been five? Maybe six. The city, laid out at her feet, had been a revelation. She'd run back and forth, standing on her tiptoes in front of the open windows, and her father had laughed and picked her up and held her so she could see better.

"It looks like an ant city!" she'd declared, which had made her parents laugh again. That was why she'd said it in the first place, of course, but it was true.

She remembered it all now, very keenly: looking down at the spreading buildings and the distant bridge and hills and water, her hair buffeted by the wind, her father's arms strong around her, and her mother's lovely voice in her ear, pointing out landmarks.

Hope opened her eyes and stared hard at the ceiling tiles until the urge to cry went away. She couldn't. Not right now.

Two uniformed police officers arrived, had a brief conversation with some of the hospital staff, gave Hope a few hard stares, then let themselves be escorted towards the operating rooms.

It was going to be the tank that caused her the most trouble, Hope reflected. Of course she would explain it as a fortunate coincidence that her father always carried such a whimsical souvenir of his cloak-and-dagger days - which it was - but it was going to make the entire thing look suspicious. Premeditated.

Which it also was.

A nurse ventured into the waiting area, an expression of professional compassion on his face and a zippered plastic bag in his hand. There weren't many people waiting tonight. An elderly man and his middle-aged son, looking despondent. A woman reading a Bible. Three college kids who had managed to fall asleep in their chairs.

The nurse skirted all of them and came to Hope. "Ms. Van Dyne?"

Hope looked up at him, pulse abruptly hammering. She did her best to hold her voice and her face steady. "Yes? Is he okay? Are they done?"

"No, it'll be a while," the nurse said, sympathetic. He held out the bag. "These are his personal effects – wallet, watch, you know. We'll dispose of the clothes, if you like, ma'am. They're… well, they've got a lot of blood on them."

The nurse's scrubs were printed with a repeating pattern: Captain America's shield and the famed Avengers "A". The ID holder clipped to his chest bore a sticker from a post-Incident fundraiser.

 _You have a superhero in your operating room,_ Hope wanted to tell him. _That old man has saved the world more times than anyone knows. Tonight he did it again._

Hope took the bag. "Thank you. Yes. That would be fine."

The nurse gave her a smile. It was professional and compassionate, and, for all that, sincere. "Can I get you coffee? Anything?"

"No thanks," Hope said. Her own smile felt like a tight and false thing, but the nurse seemed to understand. He nodded, and went back to the main desk.

Hope set the plastic bag on the chair next to hers and took out her phone again. Knowing that Pym Tech was going to be destroyed, she'd already drafted some statements for the press. She gave them a final once-over, adding and deleting and adjusting where necessary, then sent them on to the right people.

Too efficient for her own good; when she was done, Hank was still in surgery, and Scott still hadn't called.

She drummed her fingers on her thigh, listening to the latest of the endless intercom announcements – this doctor to that location – and doing her best not to notice that the insipid sitcom playing on the wall-mounted TV had just been interrupted by a breaking news alert.

The breaking news was about Pym Tech, of course.

At least the TV was muted.

Hope looked around the waiting area. The college kids were still asleep; the middle-aged son was asking his father if he wanted something from the vending machine; the woman licked a finger and turned the page in her Bible. The nurse was doing paperwork and showed no sign of coming Hope's way in the near future.

As good a time as any to risk stepping away for a minute. She picked up the plastic bag and found a restroom, where she did her best to remove her makeup with cold water and paper towels.

The waterproof mascara had been a wise choice. Maybe.

Hope dried her hands, avoided looking at her reflection, and, since the stalls were empty and she had the place to herself, opened the plastic bag and took out Hank's wallet.

There wasn't much. Credit cards, driver's license, car insurance. Old receipts. Older grocery lists. No cash.

A photo of her mother.

A photo of herself.

Her breath caught. A younger, scrawnier Hope was standing in front of her science fair project, that year when she'd had braces, grinning a mouth full of metal and proudly holding up her first-place trophy.

It had been a good project. In defiance of Hank, it had had nothing to do with insects.

She'd sent him the photo, really only at the behest of her chemistry teacher, but he'd never said anything about it, and she'd assumed…

Incorrectly. She'd assumed a lot of things incorrectly.

Her phone buzzed. She checked. It was a number she'd memorized in kindergarten – the house's land line.

She fumbled to answer it, fingers suddenly clumsy.

"Hello?" she said, her heart in her throat.

"Hey," Scott said, a bit anxious himself. "Are you okay? How's Hank?"

Hope looked around. There was a lock on the door that led to the hallway; she clicked it over. This was not a conversation anyone needed to walk in on. "I'm fine. Hank's still in surgery. They took him in right away… he's lost a lot of blood."

He exhaled. She could picture him standing in the darkened kitchen, rubbing his forehead. Her imagination put him in the t-shirt and pajama pants from that first day. Ridiculous; for all she knew he could still be in the suit, and there was no reason whatsoever to suppose he'd be in the kitchen. "Do you want me to come down there? I'd have to be ant-sized to avoid the cops, but.."

"No," she said. She wanted to say _Yes_ , and that was a different kind of terrifying. "I can handle this. What happened with Cross?"

"He's dead," Scott said, his voice unreadable. For the first time he sounded more dangerous than a smart-ass thief, and she understood why as soon as he continued. "He put on the suit and went after Cassie."

"Oh God," Hope said. She had a moment of sorrow for the Darren Cross she'd known years ago, but it was buried under a wave of horror and fury that he would threaten a child. "Is she all right?"

"Yeah. She handled it like a pro," he said, and his voice was easy to read now: relief and pride and a fierce love for his little girl.

"How did you stop Cross?" She did and didn't want to know.

Another exhale. Carefully, he said, "I... took out his power pack."

"That was titanium," she said, uncomprehending, and then the penny dropped and she had to put a hand on the sink counter because otherwise she thought she might fall. Her face in the mirror, when she glanced at it, was very pale.

"How –" Her voice stuck. She cleared her throat. "You came back."

"Yeah. I don't know how. I can't remember – it's kind of a big fuzzy blur." More quietly, he added, "I wish I did, Hope."

"Okay," she said. Dizzy with ramifications. Possibilities. She focused on her breathing and pushed her mother's bizarre, impossible, Schrödinger death off to the side, where it could wait for her. This was a time for the definites. The tangibles. "Okay. But you're in one piece?"

His tone lightened. "I dunno about _that_. I think I cracked a few ribs getting bounced off the side of the helicopter. Not to mention that jackass Paxton tased me."

Tangibles. Something for the broken pieces to lean against. "There's acetaminophen in the upstairs bathroom. Take some. And I have Tiger Balm. I'll bring it over."

"You don't need to do that. Stay with your dad."

"I'll bring it over," she said in her Pym Tech chairwoman's voice, the one that brooked no argument.

She could hear his grin. "You have a shitty bedside manner, doc."

The restroom's door handle rattled, once, twice, and then someone knocked loudly.

No more alone time. "Scott?"

"Yeah?"

The knocking turned into pounding. Angry pounding.

"I'm glad you're not dead." She hung up before he could respond, feeling all of thirteen years old. _Damn him_ , she thought, but her reflection showed the ghost of a smile lurking in the corners of her mouth.

Hope grabbed Hank's things, unlocked the door, and leveled a cool stare at the woman who was trying to come in.

Back to the waiting area. The list of things she couldn't and wouldn't think about was too long and growing exponentially. The TV situation was also worse. Someone had unmuted it and changed the channel to WHIH World News. The lead story, of course, was the catastrophe at Pym Tech.

She folded her hands over the plastic bag in her lap and stared resolutely into the middle distance, doing breathing exercises until things in her head felt less chaotic.

Marginally.

Her phone buzzed fifteen more times - all of them going to voicemail - before a doctor approached the desk, talked briefly with the Avengers nurse, then walked towards Hope.

The doctor had a white coat on over her scrubs, her short hair shading to gray. Fatigue had made lines in the dark skin of her face. Other than that, Hope couldn't decipher her expression. "Van Dyne? Hope Van Dyne?"

She stood, running on automatic. "Yes, that's me."

They shook hands. The doctor had a steady, strong grip, and she held on after Hope would have let go, bringing up her other hand to clasp Hope's between them.

"Your father's out of surgery," the doctor said, and there was more, a lot more, about a partially collapsed lung and a fractured scapula and how many milliliters of blood had had to be replaced and the prognosis for such an injury at such an age, but that shivered into fragments, and the only thing Hope truly heard was: "He pulled through just fine."

"When can I see him?" she asked.

The doctor released her hand at last. "He's in Recovery right now, coming out from the anesthesia. I'll have someone bring you up when he's transferred to a room. We'll want to keep him for a few days, for observation."

Hope nodded. "Thank you," she said, level and calm. She could have been anyone talking about anything.

The doctor gave her a weary smile, and then she left.

Hope sat down. She took out her dad's wallet and looked at the two photos again, her mother and herself.

She didn't have a picture of her parents in her wallet. She didn't have any pictures at all.

She closed the wallet and held it tightly in one hand. The other hand she pressed over her eyes to hide the fact that she was crying.


End file.
